Steak.

I love a good chunk of meat...

Again, search on the interweb for how to cook steak, and you'll find thousands of methods touting the "perfect steak". 

If you've read my chicken related rant, you'll know that I think the perfect way to cook anything is the way that you like it, not the way someone else does. Point in case - my grandfather wouldn't touch a steak unless you could bounce it five feet off the floor before using it to sole your shoes. Too many people judge, and would say that it is a waste to cook anything like that, but that's how he liked it - why would he cook it any other way?

I'm a rare to medium kind of girl - I like a good bit of pink, with a lovely crusty brown exterior. I don't like spots of blood ruining my sauce. 

Cuts of meat - there are so many cuts of meat for steak, that again, it comes down to personal preference. Some prefer the tender taste of fillet, others the meaty juice of a sirloin. Me? I like a bit of rump. Experiment with whatever is on special offer in your local butchers (or supermarket if, like me, petrol costs mean you've had to downsize on your steak offerings!). 

What to look for - I look for a nice light marbling of fat through the meat (although not too many thick veins of fat running through it). This essentially helps baste the meat from inside while it cooks, and if the marbling is thin enough, the fat will dissolve as the steak cooks so you don't end up chewing on it. Colour will depend on whether you can stretch to well hung meat. This will have a darker colour. If you can, get it - if not, it'll still taste good. 

Prep - take it out the packet, rub a little oil on each side, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

Cooking - the make or break moment!

• Get your pan smokin' hot!
• Pop your steaks in - mind out for splashes of hot fat
• Turn, turn and turn - every 15-30 seconds until you get an even colour
• Don't forget to turn your steaks on their side to get some heat into any fat running along the edge

How long to cook?

There are so many factors when you've got steak in the pan, that it's all about looking and touching. You're cooking for yourself, so there is nothing to stop you taking the steak out the pan and cutting into it to see how far cooked it is. 

Stop cooking it just before it's at the point you want it, because like any man after a hot time, it needs to rest. Stick it on a plate with foil over it. The residual heat inside the meat means it will continue to cook for a short while, which is why we want to take it out the pan just before it's ready. Resting lets the moisture inside the steak absorb back into the meat, and allows the fibres to relax, so that when you cut into it on your plate, it doesn't leak everywhere.

After five to ten minutes (depending on how late you're running with everything else, or how much wine you've drunk), it's ready to go! 

Remember, however you like it is perfect.

Rosti Rosti!

Beautiful, lovely, buttery, crispy potato goodness. Potato rosti has long been a favourite of mine. Eaten in fancy restaurants in a towering stack of tastiness, or as a wholesome meal when holidaying in mountainous terrain, the crisp crunch of potato cakes makes me salivate every time. So they are on this evening's dinner menu.

Originating from Switzerland, it was a breakfast commonly eaten by farmers in the canton of Bern (thank you Wikipedia).

It is essentially a potato pancake, but a quick search on the interweb proves to me what I've suspected all along. The Swiss are very secretive about their recipe.

Googling for rosti recipes will have your mind boggling - there are so many variations, and so many different cooking techniques that I started to doubt they were all for the same thing.

I guess how you cook your rosti depends on the vision you have in your head for the end result. For me, it is a potato cake about the diameter of a mug, a few centimetres tall, with crisp and well defined potato strands on the top. For others, it may be a slice of a large and thin potato pancake, but I find that the soft middle in mine is perfect for mopping up excess sauce. 

So, whatever way you plan to make it, the basic ingredients are the same:

(for two hungry people)

• 2 potatoes - around the size of baking potatoes. I've tried both waxy and floury and couldn't tell the difference, so use whatever is in my vegetable drawer. I'm not one for buying specific items to just cook my dinner.
• 1 small white onion - this is a disputed item, but I like the oniony bite it gives to the finished cake.
• Butter x lots - all down to personal preference, but I use lots of salted butter.

My Method:

• Peel the potatoes and onions
• Put your oven onto around 180 degrees C, or gas mark 7 if your oven is as unpredictable as mine!
• Grate the potatoes and onions - I use the grater attachment on my food processor but before I had one of those nifty gadgets, I used a cheese grater - just mind your knuckles!
• Wrap the grated potato and onion in a clean tea towel and gather up the ends, creating a tight ball.
• Head outside and swing the tea towel around until no more water comes out your potatoes (excellent workout for the bingo wings, but you can end up soaking your feet)
• Form your potato and onion mixture into cakes and press down well. I use metal chef's rings, but anything will work - cookie cutters, whatever. Metal ones are better because you can use them in your pan with direct heat. This is the point to decide how thick you want your cakes.
• Heat a heavy bottomed (all my pans are just like me) frying pan over a medium heat with half a tablespoon of olive oil and as much butter as you dare.
• Slide a fish slice under your ring (fnar fnar) and transfer it into the pan. Repeat with the other one.
• At this point, how long you need to cook it before flipping depends on how thick the base of your pan is and how hot you have it. You are looking for a light golden colour on individual strands of potato like in the photo above. For me, it's normally around five minutes.
• Flip your rings (haha!) - be careful! I use lots of butter, and every time I do this, I end up spattering myself with hot butter and oil. 
• Push your potato down inside the ring to ensure that the uncooked side is in contact with the pan. Add another chunk of butter into the pan. Cook for however long you cooked the first side. 
• Take the pan off the heat, and don't panic - you're not going to get raw potato!
• Oil a baking tray with a little olive oil and carefully move your rings onto it
• Remove the rings - the potato should hold its shape well.
• Put a knob of butter on top of each one, and wang it in the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes.

My favourite thing about this is that if you're running late with the rest of your dish, as often happens in my household, you can turn the oven off and leave them in there. I've left them in for a further twenty minutes with the oven off without them losing their crisp outer shell. 

 

What you should end up with, is a lovely crisp top and bottom, and an inside that is almost like buttery mashed potatoes. Except tonight, when I was too busy taking the above photo and burnt the arse on mine! Still tasty as hell though.